iBook 100gb HD-- recommended?

[Sttesuhc]

I'm about to buy a BTO iBook from Apple (EDU) and just want some opinions about the machine.

12" 1.33 GHz iBook
100 GB hard drive
1 GB ram
Everything else "stock"

First, before everyone tells me to buy ram later-- it's worth $135 for me to have this done for me. Maybe two years down the line I could self-install a different chip to max out at 1.5 GB.

One main question I have is whether the 100 GB hard drive is too much. There's a chance 80 GB would be enough space for me, and I'm wondering if I'm going to see a performance hit by having such a large (100gb) drive. Also, is there any reason to partition a drive in an iBook?

The computer will be my main machine for grad school use. Daily apps will include: MS Office, Acrobat or Preview, Mail, Safari, iCal, iTunes, Dashboard, iChat.

I plan to max out my 40gb iPod and have (perhaps) an even larger iTunes library. I have approx. 20 gb of digital pics, all of which I might want to add to iPhoto. Music and photos represent my "large" files, with Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, as my main files.

Eventually I can see myself buying an external FW drive for more "permanent" backup, but in the meantime I have a G4 450 that I can use for that purpose. I might, actually, just leave the digital pics on an external drive since I don't need to carry them with me.

I'm also planning to get a 6gb iPod mini as part of the promo to give to a relative as a gift. And, maybe I'll try to get a printer if I see one that really gets my attention. I have an HP Deskjet 930 right now.

Thanks for any input!

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

There's no such thing as too much HD space. Trust me.

Get the 100 GB!

Edit: But cancel the BTO RAM upgrade and get a 3rd party 1 GB RAM chip, you then will have an awesome 1.5 GB RAM. That will cost you less, and RAM is easy to upgrade, Apple's price is not "worth it"...

 

[mkrishnan]

Money doesn't seem to be a concern, and AFAIK, the smaller drives that are built into BTO iBooks are not fast ones -- there are no 7200RPM options. So I don't think the 100GB drive will be substantially slower than the smaller drives available on iBooks. So if I were you I would do it. Or even consider a Powerbook.

 

[CoMpX]

There's no such thing as too much HD space. Trust me.

Get the 100 GB!

Edit: But cancel the BTO RAM upgrade and get a 3rd party 1 GB RAM chip, you then will have an awesome 1.5 GB RAM. That will cost you less, and RAM is easy to upgrade.

I agree. If you have that much space taken up my music and pics, then you will really need the 100GB. It seems like just your pics and music along will take up almost 60GB, and really will want and need that extra 40GB of the 100GB Hdd for the OS and for room to expand. DEFINETLY go with the 100GB.

 

[GoCubsGo]

No way get the 100gb! I got the 80 on my powerbook and I bought a 120 external within 4 months. That is nearly full.

 

[mad jew]

As everyone else says, get as much hard drive space as you can afford. As for partitioning the drive, don't bother. There's no need.

 

[Sttesuhc]

What about Fragmentation?

Thanks for the input everyone! Looks like the 100gb is a no-brainer.

As a follow-up question:

Is there any worry about fragmentation? Should I copy over my file types all at once-- as in, copy all of my iTunes at one time so they are physically on the HD in the same area?

Thanks!

 

[mad jew]

No worries about fragmentation either. For all intents and purposes, OSX does this automatically.*


*I'm pretty sure it's only for files under 20MB, but I can't remember.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

About disk optimization with Mac OS X

 

[iDM]

Its always nice to have as much onboard hard drive space as possible!

 

[Sttesuhc]

Thanks again guys! The link to the Apple page has some great info. My previous computer use was digital audio in OS 9.2, hence my questions about defrag. Glad to see OS X taking care of the "general" kinds of things.

 

[londy]

this was really helpful for me too. i was vascillating between 80GB and 100GB. i'll be in grad school too and i know just how invaluable my laptop was for my master's. though i won't have much in the way of pictures on my 'book, i'll definitely have a fair bit of music on it (i already have a 10GB pod and i think i'll be getting a 30GB when i get my ibook). i just didn't want to overshoot the amount of HD space and end up wasting it. though i doubt that it'll really be a waste--i plan to keep this 'book until i finish school in 4 or 5 years.

between flash drives and backing up info on dvds, i don't think i'll use the hd up too quickly. i don't *think*.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

...
between flash drives and backing up info on dvds, i don't think i'll use the hd up too quickly. i don't *think*.

Aaah... the naiveté of youth...

I was thinking along those lines a year and a half ago when I got my iBook. I got it with, the then maximum BTO, 60 GB HD, which was a significant step up from the (far from full) 40 GB I had in my Pismo. Now, everyday is a struggle to keep enough space available...